


Regrets

by kikibug13



Category: Captain America (2011), Marvel (Movies)
Genre: Community: queer_fest, LGBTQ Character, M/M, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-13
Updated: 2012-06-13
Packaged: 2017-11-07 15:49:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/432841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kikibug13/pseuds/kikibug13
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky is gone. And so there are some things that will never get said, and heard.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Regrets

**Author's Note:**

> For queer_fest 2012 prompt:
> 
> Fandom: Marvel Comics (Captain America: First Avenger)  
> Prompt: Steve/Bucky All the things Steve wishes he had said to Bucky but hadn't because he hadn't been able to admit how he really felt.
> 
> Pre-movie canon is based on the tie-in comics, _Captain America: The First Vengeance_.

They hadn't found the body.

Steve Rogers knew, because he'd kept on asking until the order came down and they were returned, prisoner in tow, to London. Much as he wanted to stay, he knew better. This wasn't quitting - he'd be back when this was all over. He'd be back and he'd search every damned nook and cranny along those slopes until he had his friend back, or what was left of him. 

Anything to have left, of him...

So it would not be a pretty thing by the time they found him, even in this kind of cold. But he-- But Bucky deserved to be brought home and laid to rest, didn't he?

Steve also made sure that Dr. Arnim Zola was nowhere in his sight during the entire time - during the search and on their return. Nobody objected. He couldn't promise to stop himself from hurting the man, and that would have made Bucky shake his head. _We didn't go to all this trouble to catch him for you to sever his windpipe. We could have just blown up the damn train instead. Hands off._ That's what he would say, or something like that. And it would make sense. That was something nobody had appreciated about Bucky. He gave sound advice, despite all the appearances to the opposite. It may have leaned towards the unsafe - or downright dangerous - but never so as to put them into a situation they couldn't escape or--

No. It took Steve to put him in one. 

_Don't be ridiculous, you got me out of one, this one just happened..._

The chatter was going on around him, Dum Dum asking him things and Phillips trying to run things past him and Steve could just stare at or around them in the crowded carrier. Most of them stopped talking, after he'd looked at them for a few moments. Funny thing, that. 

He still escaped almost as soon as they landed. Needed to change, or something like that.

The room they shared... the room they had shared was no help, of course. But, at least, it was quiet. Quiet for his thoughts. Quiet for his memories.

Quiet with the task to pack up Bucky's things for shipping home, and that was when he started crying. For that, he could lock the door. 

Neither of them had _many_ things. With the uniforms and little mementos they'd collected along the way during the war, they both had more than they'd been used to, while growing up. 

The clothes that needed folding and putting away smelled of his sweat. That sharp tang that he remembered changing from when Bucky had been six and offered him friendship and they'd spent that stupidly hot summer trying to find shades that nobody would chase them away from with a rolling pin, through filling up in height and width as Steve hadn't, to the whiff of musk when adolescence completed its run. That smell which had always noticed and sometimes complained about for nearly setting off his coughing when it was too thick but never really minded, and now he grabbed the shirt he'd been trying to fold and shoved his face into it just to hold on to that smell longer, and cried, there. 

There was a small spot of old blood at the arm. It took him a while to notice it, but it was there. A scrape as Bucky had dodged a shot a bit too close to a wall, probably. Enough to break skin, not enough-- no, there was the darning, too. Sloppy. But then, again, Bucky wasn-- Bucky _hadn't been_ the world's best artist. Just appreciative. 

Of women. 

God. He should have talked with him, anyway. 

He should have told him that no matter how many dames he set up for him, or didn't, Steve would have come along anyway, because what difference did it make. The woman wouldn't pay attention to him, and neither would the man, and only one of those mattered. Except Bucky _would_ pay attention, just not that way. Bucky would know how hard he could nudge him with an elbow without bruising him. He knew which way Steve would move if something unexpected came up, and just how to scoop him with an arm and out of harm's way, and that was almost like a hug, right?

He should have told him that those touches meant more... that they reached deeper than any beating he could have gotten. And not only because they kept him from getting hurt. Not at all, as a matter of fact. 

Steve didn't know _when_ Bucky Barnes had become the one constant in his life, and the only person who _mattered_ , but he'd been aware of it well before Pearl Harbor. It had been that little extra motivation to keep him going when his body was nearly collapsing when Bucky was trying to prepare him for the phys exam for volunteering for the army. 

Nobody doubted they'd take _Bucky_. Nobody believed that they'd take _Steve_. Except maybe Bucky. And failing wasn't an option for Steve... because he could not imagine his life without Bucky. 

At all. 

_Damn it._

He should have said something. Even with Peggy slowly beginning to touch him in ways that mattered, he should have. It was Bucky, he would NOT have turned away in disgust. He'd have gotten that really surprised expression on his face, large eyes going huge for a moment, and then he'd soften. Hell, maybe they would have figured something out. Maybe Bucky would have given him a hug, or more. Maybe he would have fought that much harder and wouldn't have died, if he'd known somebody, anybody, felt this way about him. Not for a date or a month or whatever his running record of seeing any one dame happened to be. For always. 

"Even with what I became, the months while you were out here and I was stuck back home were the emptiest in my life."

"You're the reason I keep clinging to all that I set out to do, the strength that keeps me going when there is nothing left inside."

"You lit up my life in a way I never thought possible to live, from that very first day in the alley, and only brighter , since."

"You're the most beautiful person I know, more than any of the dames you so appreciated in those stupid art lessons that we could have spent otherwise since I didn't need them and you didn't want them."

"You are the first person I drew that wasn't my family, and you'd be surprised at how many times I have. All the ages, since we met." (He'd only be drawing him from memory, now...)

"The way your face would change from rapt attention to immediate concern when I started coughing while reading out loud to you meant the world to me." (How long had it been since they'd last done that? Steve remembered the way Bucky let him lean against him for it, the warmth against his back keeping the asthma at bay better than anything else that had been tried on him...)

"I let you talk me into all those things you did because, no matter what kind of trouble it got us into or how miserable I felt, the way your eyes lit up with the excitement or joy or whatever you found in them was always worth it."

"You _always_ wait for me when you go places, even when it's complicated. Don't stop." (Except he hadn't waited for him this time.)

By the time he reached the most important one, he felt like he'd cried himself out, he'd found out that he couldn't get drunk, and damned if he cared that the place he was at had been bombed and he was alone. 

Bucky would never show up, anyway, so why did it matter?

"I love you."

It wasn't any good now, of course. Thinking it or whispering it... 

It just made everything duller. 

Bucky was gone. Bucky was gone because he'd been as unable to stay away as Steve had been from him, and Steve had put him where he shouldn't have been and maybe because Steve had not given him the reasons to fight harder to hold on. 

Ironic, wasn't it. 

Now he could drink for the both of them and get drunk for neither.


End file.
